There’s a lot of hysteria over vaccines and the threat which they supposedly pose to the population because of some of the ingredients and the possibility of government mandated vaccinations against potential pandemics like Swine Flu (H1N!). While as a matter of principle the idea of forced vaccinations is an utterly unacceptable violation of individual rights, the hysteria over the risks of vaccines is based on a fundamental logical fallacy which needs to be exposed.

Some of the ingredients in modern vaccines can be very scary. Thiomersal is a compound based on EthylMercury which is used as an antifungal perservative. It is supposed to be stable and leave the body quickly, but is beleived to break down and cause neurological disorders incluidng autism. Squalene is a natural compound developed from shark liver oil which is an adjuvant which helps accelerate immune responses and is suspected of causing autoimmune disorders like Gulf War Syndrome. Aluminum is also used as an adjuvant and raises concerns that it may not leave the system and can cause a variety of adverse reactions. Extensive tests have been made on all of these ingredients and have found them to be safe in the tiny amounts included in vaccines, but the fact that they are genuinely toxic in larger amounts raises suspicion about them for those looking for explanations for troubling symptoms.

For our purposes here we can actually put aside the real or imagined dangers of these ingredients entirely. Let’s just grant for the sake of argument that there’s some real danger associated with some of these ingredients as critics suggest. It’s certainly true that there are things in vaccines which are genuinely dangerous. Flu vaccines are incubated in egg yolks, which many are dangerously allergic to. More significantly, every vaccine includes some form of a virus and those viruses are in and of themselves dangerous. There’s always a small chance of contracting the disease the vaccine protects you from by taking the vaccine. That’s how most vaccines work, giving you a mild exposure so you build up a resistance before you are exposed to the disease itself.

So yes, vaccines are inherently dangerous. As with almost everything in life making use of them is a calculated risk. Every day when you get in your car you are taking a calculated risk. You’re betting that despite the rather high level of automobile fatalities today won’t be the day you die in a car crash. You act on the assumption that the risk of dying is outweighed by your need to get places and do things. It’s the same with a vaccine. You’re betting that immunity to a serious and potentially fatal disease is worth the small risk of an unpleasant or even fatal side effect. For that to be a good bet, the risk posed by the vaccine needs to be substantially lower than the risk posed by the disease it protects you from.

The logical fallacy here is that while vaccines are dangerous and may even cause all sorts of terrible things like autism and the occasional death, the chance of dying or getting some other serious side effect from a vaccine is tiny compared to the chance of dying from the disease the vaccine protects you from. Therefore you accept the risk, because it protects you from something worse.

A lot of the argument about vaccines focuses on the flu vaccine because it is the cause celebre of the moment, but there is a lot of conflicting information because there are so many different strains of flu. To demonstrate how this fallacy applies it is easier to look at the simpler and well documented case of the Human Papilloma Vaccine which protects teenage girls from contracting cervical cancer in the future, and which has stirred up a great deal of controversy in its own right because of alarming side-effects and because in many ways it has proved to be a worst-case scenario in unexpected consequences.

Cervical cancer kills 2.4 of every 100,000 women in the United States. 23 million doses of the HPV vaccine have been distributed. Statistics suggest that of 23 million woment treated, 552 would have died without the vaccine. Studies of side effects of the HPV vaccine in use found that the most common effect was fainting, which occurred in 8.2 of 100,000 vaccinations, and that the most serious side-effect was abnormal blood clotting in .2 cases per 100,000, leading to strokes and paralyzation and in 32 documented cases it has resulted in death.

While each of those deaths is tragic, these statistics tell us that a girl not given the HPV vaccine is at least 17 times more likely to die of cervical cancer than a girl given the vaccine is to die from the vaccine. 17 to 1 odds in your favor are pretty good. Even if you take all of the cases of abnormal blood clotting into consideration, it’s still 12 times less likely to happen than death would without the vaccine. Again, 12 chances of dying to 1 chance of a dangerous blood clot is pretty good odds.

This is the heart of the problem with how many people look at vaccines. They look only at the risks of the vaccine without considering the greater threat which the vaccines prevent. Sure, you can point to the HPV vaccine and say it killed 32 people. But that’s 520 fewer people than would have died had the vaccine not been invented. The same holds true with other vaccines. The only sensible way to look at them is to consider both the risk and the benefits.

22 Responses to “The Vaccine Fallacy”

Dave, when you say that thimerasol, aluminum and other toxic ingredients have been tested and found to be not-noxious in small quantities, you betray the fact that you are not medically researched. Sorry but I don’t know how else to say this.
First of all, medical studies can be and are very often tweaked for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits. I speak as one who reads the government medical webpages, http://www.pubmed.gov and knows medical terminology. I compared the same drug studies (about 12 of them) from European and American countries, and the difference in American and European reviews of the same drug was striking. Further, drugs that have very serious side effects are studied and passed by the FDA all the time. Additionally, mercury is known by toxicologists to be the most toxic substance on the planet except for two radioactive isotopes known to outstrip its potent toxicity. A little bit is all it takes. I don’t know if these facts interest you and I have to question which side of the street you are on. Please examine your conscience before you write and influence people. Mercury causes MS, cancer and very serious immune system issues. Is this what you want to tout and promote?

I’m on the side of reason, IA. Show me an actual double blind study which links thimerasol with MS or cancer. I won’t hold my breath.

And being able to read medical web pages and recognize the terminology clearly doesn’t give you the ability to understand what you read.

You also share the problem of most of the vaccine paranoiacs in not understanding statistics. The fact that these substances are dangerous is a given, but the number of instances where they do actual harm is statistically insignificant in comparison to the benefits of the vaccines, and that is the key fact which you ninnys just never seem to be able to grasp.

“Hysteria” over vaccines? The only hysteria I’ve seen is those in the media promoting vaccines. After all, there’s a lot of money to be made! I further find it suspicious that this article was written at a time that NY attempted its tyrannical H1N1 mandate against all health care workers. What else could possibly motivate its preparation and publication?

I note a carload of superficially credible-sounding conjectures, but nothing scientifically verifiable in a lab. The real studies exposing the dangers have been covered up or the results deliberately obfuscated. The pharmaceutical apparatus has plenty of resources for that.

Also, Dave…If you want to be taken seriously, I suggest you make a better effort at keeping your articles and posts a bit more sanitized and refrain from remarks like “ninnys” just because someone disagrees with you.

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